Your comment itself, is, of course an "in-group signifier". But I guess if you're not an academic it's less gross? Or if you are an academic, you're virtue si

Your comment itself, is, of course an "in-group signifier". But I guess if you're not an academic it's less gross? Or if you are an academic, you're virtue signaling how "not an in-group signifier" you are by "out-of-group" signaling. Or something. I'm not really meaning to attack you, even though it sounds like it - but just noting a certain irony of judgement about in-group signifiers without acknowledging that one is always signifiying. One cannot escape signification. And to judge it as something to be avoided (as opposed to observed and noted), is... well... IDK. No man is an island and all that. Even stones cannot escape being signified, but they are incapable of signifying. Humans on the other hand. Cannot even escape the process of doing the signifiying. There is no "gross" as it is a social phenomenon and all ingroup/outgroup dynamics always hold, and all such organizational referents happen across the domains, regardless, and no-one is above this, no matter how much we wish to absolve ourselves of this process. And that was a hell of a signifier, on my part. (one signifying I'm a wannabe academic with no actual formal education, I suppose). EDIT: Further - what exactly do you think the point of Academics is? To get published, and how do you get published? Via RECOGNITION OF PEERS. So this fits fully hand in glove with entirely WHAT academia is. Academia is a social function, it is not a sterile lab with pure physics and escaped from the social dimension. I guess I am critiquing you, despite what I said earlier, as I've thought about it more, and think - this sounds very much like something someone who works in a pristine 'logical' domain of computing thinks academia should be, not what it is. It further reinforces the fact that comp-sci people SHOULD take social sciences to understand such things, and it also explains why Elon is such a shit lord cuz he thinks the greats like Norbert Wiener and other systems theorists were abstracted away from society, when they knew full well just how integrated society is in everything.